Union Literary is a full-service boutique agency specializing in literary fiction, popular fiction, narrative non-fiction, memoir, social history, business and general big idea books, popular science, cookbooks and food writing. We excel at project development, hands-on editing and placing our projects with domestic and foreign publishers, film and television companies.

Trena Keatingtk@unionliterary.com
Trena Keating represents a range of talented authors with strong voices and creative and cutting-edge ideas, including novelists, journalists, celebrities, and experts writing for a popular audience such as professors, doctors, scientists, and entrepreneurs. She manages complicated estates, works with multi-platform writers, develops and grows authors in mid-career, and introduces new voices to the book world, building their career through media opportunities and around the world. Her list is a balance of #1 NYT bestsellers and debuts; she finds that equal are the pleasures of working with masters of the craft and new talent filled with promise. Prior to becoming an agent, Trena was Editor-in-Chief of Dutton and Associate Publisher of Plume, both imprints of Penguin, Senior Editor at HarperCollins, and humanities assistant at Stanford University Press and has had the honor to work with such esteemed, award-winning, and bestselling writers as Tracy Chevalier, E.L. Doctorow, Diane Johnson, Toni Morrison, and Joyce Carol Oates, as well as actively publishing estate classics from George Orwell and Ayn Rand. She has appeared as a publishing expert on Kathy Griffin’s television show and “Inside Edition”. Trena takes on a select list of clients so she can actively edit and effectively manage each career.

Sally Wofford-Girandswg@unionliterary.com
Sally Wofford-Girand has worked with such luminaries as Salman Rushdie, Grace Paley, Kim Edwards, and Alice Hoffman as the foreign rights director at a boutique literary agency. Her particular areas of interest are: history, memoir, women’s issues, cultural studies, and, most of all, fiction that is both literary and gripping. Favorite authors include Cormac McCarthy, Kate Atkinson, Jennifer Egan, Elizabeth Strout, Anne Patchett, John Green, Jose Saramago, and Wallace Stegner. She is a hands-on agent with a passion for great storytelling. She loves the thrill of discovery in working with debut novelists. Sally is on the International Committee of AAR and a board member of Writers Omi, an international writers colony in New York.

Jenni Ferrari-Adlerjenni@unionliterary.com
Jenni Ferrari-Adler represents a list of exciting fiction writers including Emma Straub, Ariel Djanikian, and Brittani Sonnenberg, award-winning food writers including Maria Speck, Cheryl Sternman Rule, and Nancy Singleton Hachisu, food shops including Four & Twenty Blackbirds, The Meat Hook, and Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, as well as the estate of Pamela Moore, YA, narrative nonfiction, and other categories. Jenni worked for 5 years at Brick House Literary Agents and 4 years at Sobel Weber Associates. Recent novels she wished she represented are THE SNOW CHILD by Eowyn Ivey, WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE by Maria Semple, and THE INTERESTINGS by Meg Wolitzer. Jenni loves working closely with her clients on every step of the process. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan and a BA from Oberlin. She edited the anthology ALONE IN THE KITCHEN WITH AN EGGPLANT. She has taught writing at the University of Michigan and the Gotham Writers Workshop, and worked as a reader for The Paris Review and a bookseller at Housing Works. Jenni is on the contracts committee of the AAR. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, daughter, and son.

Taylor Curtintaylor@unionliterary.com
Taylor Curtin is Union Literary's newest addition and is currently working on building her list. Taylor is interested in true crime, young and new-adult fiction (especially in the realms of sci-fi and fantasy—both high and low), as well as upmarket and literary fiction. For true crime she is looking for compelling stories that bring the drama and incorporate aspects of psychology, forensics, and/or the litigation process. Regarding fiction, she is a sucker for snappy, sarcastic characters with stories that ring (painfully) true while making the reader laugh, or even cry. Taylor is passionate about narratives that are diverse, culturally conscious, and socially aware (particularly for younger readers). She has an appetite for high-quality and evocative writing that transports the reader to unfamiliar places, or lends fresh eyes to a familiar place. She’s not afraid of edgier, grittier, or darker voices and stories, and prefers the kid-gloves are off when handling young readers. Before finding her way to publishing, Taylor worked as a wardrobe stylist and a personal assistant, fetching red carpet gowns and coffee in one, semi-frenzied swoop (think: The Devil Wears Prada). While her professional experience runs the gamut, her love affair with books was given new life after an internship at Writers House, where she worked in the office of Susan Golomb.

DRAGONFLY by Alyson Richman (World English to Berkley)
A young cellist, drawn into the Italian Resistance during WWII, risks her life and is forced to abandon her family and home, only to find unlikely shelter with a doctor who is seeking his own redemption. From the bestselling author of The Lost Wife.

THE VACATIONERS by Emma Straub (World to Riverhead)
In the tradition of country house novels like Enchanted April and Maine, tensions, longings, grudges, and secrets explosively rise to the surface during an extended family's two-week vacation in Mallorca, Spain.

THE PARADISE GUEST HOUSE by Ellen Sussman (World English to Ballantine)
Set in Bali during the aftermath of the 2002 nightclub bombings, a story about love, risk, and facing up to our deepest fears.
***Brazil - Casa da Palavra; Germany - Blanvalet

THE BOOK OF KILLOWEN by Erin Hart (North America to Scribner)
An ancient volume of philosophical heresy provides a motive for murder in this haunting, lyrical novel of forensics, archeology, and history—the fourth in an acclaimed suspense series.

WHOLE-GRAIN MORNINGS by Megan Gordon (World English to Ten Speed)
A cookbook featuring more than 50 recipes for healthy and whole-grain based breakfast foods as well as narratives about Megan’s company and personal life, by the writer of the popular blog A Sweet Spoonful, and owner of Seattle-based granola company Marge.

GLUTEN-FREE FAMILY FAVORITES by Peter and Kelli Bronski (World to The Experiment)

THE AFTERNOONS OF A WOMAN OF LEISURE by Elizabeth Bennett (North America to Intermix/Berkley)
Joanna, a bored, beautiful young housewife becomes involved with a mysterious “O,” a woman whose clients and employees experiment with pleasure, pain, and what she refers to as “issues of control.” The Afternoons of a Woman of Leisure recalls The Story of O and offers a darker, more sophisticated take on the themes that have made Fifty Shades of Grey a phenomenon.
***UK - Little, Brown

BREATHE by Kate Bishop (World English E-Book to Diversion)
When Alex’s high-powered husband finds himself through yoga, and his gorgeous yoga teacher, he walks out on Alex, suggesting that some time alone with her thoughts would do her some good. When drinking through his prize wine collection and pizza takeout do not prove the cure to her heartache and bruised ego, she reluctantly allows her two best friends to intervene. As she slowly learns to define success on her own terms, she finds the secret to love, in all its forms, and the perfect flying crow pose, one breath at a time. Kate Bishop is a pen name for three yoga teachers who have together studied psychology, education, and creative writing, as well as the healing arts. They own a popular yoga studio in Portland, Oregon.

THE MEAT HOOK MEAT BOOK by Tom Mylan (World to Artisan)
First Cookbook from the Beloved Brooklyn Butcher and his shop.

THE GRAVITY OF BIRDS (North American rights to Simon and Schuster) by Tracy Guzeman, a debut novel that begins when a famous artist reveals the existence of a previously unseen painting to an art history professor and an art authenticator, sending them on a search for two reclusive sisters that will reveal a thwarted love affair, breathtaking betrayals, and unexpected connections between them all.

FOUR & TWENTY BLACKBIRDS: PIE (W to Grand Central)
A cookbook of pie recipes, techniques, and stories, by sisters from South Dakota, third-generation pie bakers, and co-owners of the wildly popular Brooklyn pie shop and cafe Four & Twenty Blackbirds.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

THE WRAP UP LIST by Steven Arntson (NA to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
High School Senior Gabriela Rivera has one week to wrap up her life after receiving a death letter, which accounts for 1% of fatalities in a mostly familiar world.

AMONG THE JANEITES by Deborah Yaffe (NA to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Narrative non-fiction journey through the world of Jane Austen Fandom,by award-winning journalist and longtime Janeite.

LAST CALL IN THE CITY OF BRIDGES by Salvatore Pane (Braddock Books)

CHOCOLATES FOR BREAKFAST by Pamela Moore (NA to Harper Perennial)

FRUITFUL by Brian Nicholson and Sarah Huck (Running Press)

SODIUM GIRL’S LIMITLESS LOW-SODIUM COOKBOOK: How to Lose the Salt and Eat the Foods You Love by Jessica Goldman Foung (World to Wiley)

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones (North America to The Dial Press)
From Here to Eternity, which won the National Book Award in 1952, recreated the authentic soldier experience and captures, like nothing else, the honor and savagery of man. Sixty years after its first publication, the estate has at last restored the original language to the most important novel to come out of World War II, along with a foreword by William Styron and correspondence between James Jones and his editor, the famous Maxwell Perkins, including letters on the issue of censorship. The film version won eight Academy Awards.
***Hungary - Trivium Kft; Chinese simple - Beijing Pengfeiyili Book; Spain - Ediciones B; Korea - The Open Books Co.; UK - Hodder; Poland - Ksiaznica; Italy - Neripozza

THE THIN RED LINE by James Jones (North America to The Dial Press)
A classic of combat fiction and one of the most significant explorations of male identity in American literature, establishing Jones as a novelist of the caliber of Herman Melville and Stephen Crane, now rereleased with foreword by Francine Prose.
***Japan (educational extract) - Waseda Prep School; Italy - R.C.S. Libri SpA; Poland - Visvis/Etiuda Publishing House; UK - Hodder; Chinese simple - Beijing Pengfeiyili Book; Korea - Minumsa Publishing Co.

THE SALT GOD'S DAUGHTER by Ilie Ruby (World English to Counterpoint)
Ilie Ruby's THE SALT GOD'S DAUGHTER, which uncovers the family secrets of three generations of women who settle near the ocean in Southern California, a place of mythic folklore, exotic landscapes, and Jewish mysticism, and the effect of a love affair on a woman, who has a daughter born with a secret she tries to keep hidden as she seeks out the father she never knew.

THE MOUNTAIN AND THE FATHERS by Joe Wilkins (World English to Counterpoint)
Pushcart Prize nominee, Best New Poets and Best American Essays author, and 2010 National Magazine Award finalist Joe Wilkins’ narrative that explores the life of boys and men in the unforgiving, harsh world of Eastern Montana, the Big Dry, pitched in the vein of Ian Frazier and Norman McClean.

LAURA LAMONT'S LIFE IN PICTURES by Emma Straub (World to Riverhead)
Debut novel in which a Midwestern girl's transformation into a 1940s Hollywood movie star comes at a high cost to family and identity.

IN THE KINGDOM OF MEN by Kim Barnes (North America to Knopf/Vintage)
An Oklahoma woman follows her husband to the oilfields of Saudi Arabia in the 1960s, where, living in a compound, the couple makes a startling discovery about the depths of the Saudis’ institutionalized racism and the accusation of murder threatens to tear them apart.
***UK - Hutchinson; Audio - Dreamscape

AND LAUGHTER FELL FROM THE SKY by Jyotsna Sreenivasan (North America to Morrow)
A debut novel and contemporary love story about a young Indian-American woman determined to please her family and go through with an arranged marriage, as soon as she can stop sleeping with inappropriate men, especially the irritatingly bohemian friend of her younger brother, who may be the one she can’t live without.

JAPANESE FARM FOOD, by Nancy Singleton Hachisu (World English to Andrews McMeel)
160 recipes for Japanese country dishes, with family stories, and photographs by Kenji Miura. Foreword by Patricia Wells and Praise from Alice Waters.

SALTIE: A Cookbook by Caroline Fidanza (World to Chronicle)
A cookbook with 100 recipes for sandwiches, salads and soups, sweets and savory treats and more, by the founding chef of Diner and Marlow & Sons, from the beloved sandwich shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

SHADES OF HOPE: A Program to Stop Dieting and Start Living by Tennie McCarty (World to Amy Einhorn Books/Penguin USA)
One of the foremost experts on eating addiction, Tennie McCarty uses her own inspiring story, as well as the treatment from her famous retreat center, Shades of Hope, to help readers break the endless cycle of diets.

GIFTS OF THE CROW: A Scientific Journey into Seven Human Characteristics Revealed by These Cerebral Birds by John Marzluff (World to Free Press)
Crows are mischievous, playful, social, and passionate. With its abundance of funny, awe-inspiring, and poignant stories, indie bestseller Gifts of the Crow portrays creatures who are nothing short of amazing. A testament to years of painstaking research and careful observation by scientist John Marzluff, this fully illustrated, riveting work is a thrilling look at one of nature’s most wondrous creatures.

HAND ME DOWN by Melanie Thorne (World to Dutton)
Fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Reid has spent her life protecting her sister, Jaime, from their parents’ cruel mistakes. Their father would rather feed his vices than his daughters. And when their once-loving mother chooses to start a new family with a dangerous ex-con, Elizabeth and Jaime are separated and forced to rely on the begrudging kindness of increasingly distant relatives. Abandoned by her mother and burdened by a bleak pact with a deceitful adult, Elizabeth is no longer sure she can save Jamie—or even herself. Written in “prose that vibrates with intelligence and passion,” (Kirkus, starred review), Hand Me Down is an evocative, semi-autobiographical debut that announces Melanie Thorne as a powerful new voice in fiction.

THE REBEL WIFE by Taylor Polites (North America to Simon & Schuster)
Brimming with atmosphere and edgy suspense, regional bestseller The Rebel Wife presents a young widow trying to survive in the violent world of Reconstruction Alabama, where the old gentility masks continuing violence fueled by hatred, treachery, and still powerful secrets. As Augusta Branson summons the courage to cross the boundaries of hate, The Rebel Wife presents an unforgettable heroine for our time.

BRIGHT LIGHTS, NO CITY by Max Alexander (World English to Hyperion)
The true story of his brother Whit’s effort to start a sustainable, profitable business that employs Africans—a business that carries all the usual risk associated with entrepreneurship plus the risks of malaria and machete attack, and involves literally bringing light to poor villages in Ghana.
***Korea - Sigongsa

RIPE: A Fresh, Colorful Approach to Fruits and Vegetables, by Cheryl Sternman Rule and photographer Paulette Phlipot (World to Running Press)
A photocentric vegetarian cookbook, with stories and recipes, organized by color.

CHICAGO CHEF'S TABLE by Amelia Levin (World to Lyons Press)
100 signature dishes from more than fifty of the city's best chefs -- from Charlie Trotter, Rick Bayless, and Grant Achatz, to the burgeoning street food scene.

THE NAPTIME CHEF, Fitting Great Food into Family Life by Kelsey Banfield (North American to Running Press)
A cookbook by blogger of TheNaptimeChef.com and Babble columnist, featuring 150 recipes to prepare during your child’s naptime, plus smart tips, stories, and the encouraging and empowering message that you don’t have to give up being a foodie just because you are a parent or have limited time in the kitchen.

FOLLOW ME DOWN by Kio Stark (World to Red Lemonade/Richard Nash)
Stark writes about relational technology at NYU. She has written about feminism, NYC night court, the history of the documentary, graphic novels, failure and her favorite saints for The Nation, Killing the Buddha, Lime Tea, Feed and other publications. Follow Me Down is her first novel.

ALL THAT IS BITTER AND SWEET by Ashley Judd (World English to Ballantine)
In this deeply moving and unforgettable memoir, a New York Times bestseller and Books-A-Million’s Non-Fiction Book Club May 2012 pick, Ashley Judd describes her odyssey, from lost child to fiercely dedicated advocate, from anger and isolation to forgiveness and activism.
***Poland - Weltbild

THE LOST WIFE by Alyson Richman (World English to Berkley)
The story of a successful New York obstetrician who still dreams of his first wife, Lenka, an art student he left behind in Czechoslovakia while fleeing the Nazis, and who he believes died during the war.

WHAT CHEFS FEED THEIR KIDS: RECIPES AND TECHNIQUES FOR CULTIVATING A LOVE OF GOOD FOOD by Fanae Aaron (World to Globe Pequot)
A cookbook and parenting resource featuring 100 varied and easy recipes, strategies, tips, and stories, from top chefs who are parents.

FRENCH LESSONS by Ellen Sussman (World English to Ballantine)
The story of how a single day in Paris changes the lives of three different Americans as they each set off to explore the city with a French tutor, learning not just about language, but also love and loss as their lives intersect in surprising ways.

FOUR KITCHENS: MY LIFE BEHIND THE BURNER IN MANHATTAN, ISRAEL, VIETNAM, AND PARIS by Lauren Shockey (World to Grand Central).
Memoir of a young chef looking for her place in the world, with recipes.

THE WIKKELING, by Steven Arntson (World English to Running Press)
A middle-grade adventure set in a near-future dystopia and told in the smart and playful style of The Mysterious Benedict Society, in which three friends unravel the mystery of their life-threatening migraines, overcome a frightening enemy, and discover that the world is more complicated, and more magical, than they’ve been taught. A debut by a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

CAMPFIRE COOKERY: ADVENTURESOME RECIPES & OTHER CURIOSITIES FOR THE GREAT OUTDOORS by Sarah Huck and Jaimee Young (World to Stewart, Tabori, & Chang)
Cookbook featuring 120 fanciful yet simple recipes for nature enthusiasts who crave more than beans and s’mores, and home cooks who want to bring the spirit of camping home, with a foreword by Melissa Clark.

GAMES TO PLAY AFTER DARK, a debut novel by Sarah Gardner Borden (North American to Vintage)
The story of a modern marriage from the electric meet-cute at a party in the West Village to the messy tumult of suburban parenthood. Drawing comparisons to Mary Gaitskill and Richard Yates for its exploration of the dark side of the American dream.

PLANTING DANDELIONS: FIELD NOTES FROM A SEMI-DOMESTICATED LIFE by Kyran Pittman (World to Riverhead)
Essays on love, family, sex after children, money, foreclosure, in which Pittman, a native of Newfoundland, will reveal what it’s like to be a wife, mother and foreigner living in white-picket-fence suburban Arkansas.

OTHER PEOPLE WE MARRIED by Emma Straub (North American to FiveChapters Books, rereleased by Riverhead)
A debut story collection about the surprising and often funny ways love develops and disintegrates over time, by a writer Dan Chaon calls “wry, witty, incisively observant” and Kevin Brockmeier says has “the smarts and humor of a Lorrie Moore or a Laurie Colwin or a Laurie Anderson—any number of Lauries”.

Please review our roster and direct your query/submission to the agent who seems best suited to it. We prefer to receive submissions by email, but we also accept them by post to the address below. Please note that mailed material will not be returned.

Union Literary
30 Vandam Street
Suite 5A
New York NY 10013

We will only respond if we are interested.

Nonfiction submissions should include a query letter, a proposal, and a sample chapter.

Fiction submissions should include a query letter, a synopsis, and either sample pages or a full manuscript.

The agency does not represent romance, poetry, science fiction, or illustrated books.